Blog Assignment #12

Eric Whitacre’s “Sleep” is all about harmony formed through the choir parts. The tone of the piece is completely set up by the harmonies. The message of the song is dark and eerie; the message gets conveyed heavily through the chords made through the different choir parts singing. Tension is created in some chords when some of the notes are very close to each other, for example one natural note and one sharp note. As someone who has sung this piece, I can say that this effect is very difficult to create because if the intonation is off at all the chord is not correct. There is not much to be said about rhythm of this piece because of the lethargic nature of the song that represents sleep.